The GOAT Store published a detailed press release that hints towards their future plans:

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The GOAT Store, LLC today announced that they would be relaunching a GOAT Store Publishing Web site on September 9th. GOAT Store Publishing, the independent publishing branch of the GOAT Store, LLC is best known for pioneering independent Dreamcast publishing and has producing more independent games for the Dreamcast than any other company.

The relaunched GOAT Store Publishing Web site will focus on the history of the releases that have come so far, as well as the people behind them. By relaunching on September 9th, the GOAT Store hopes to have another opportunity to celebrate the Dreamcast independent developers have accomplished on it.

"We have always worked to showcase independent developers to the best of our ability, while at the same time respecting the Dreamcast fans." Gary Heil of the GOAT Store said. "We never felt that we needed to disguise our games as official releases to sell them or make outlandish claims that we couldn't back up. Our releases have stood on their own. We never felt the need to threaten to leave the Dreamcast community if a game didn't sell well. We haven't published any games with the goal of getting rich or famous; we've published games because they were great titles that we felt players needed to play."

The GOAT Store notes that the relaunch is not really as much about GOAT Store Publishing, but people and companies like Cryptic Allusion (Feet of Fury), Harmless Lion (Cool Herders), JMD (Maqiupai), Mad Peet (Irides) and lastly ChaosReins (Spinner for Atari Jaguar) who are the real stars of what has been accomplished.

The press release also discusses other expansions in the Goat Store Network. Read the release in its entirety here.

Giving rescent events with RedSpotGames it is good to hear from someone who is genuinely dedicated to the independent development scene on Dreamcast.GSP clearly seems to be addressing RSG as all of their published games follow Sega of Japanâ€™s Dreamcast packaging template where as Goat Store Publishing have always had an original template:The outlandish claims that they are talking about are RSGâ€™s claim that Rush Rush Rally Racing broke a record for most selling inde game that Last Hope had set, the statement was untrue to begin with as only 2,500 units were pressed of Last Hope.Here is a possible hint towards their next release Cryptic Allusion (Feet of Fury), Harmless Lion (Cool Herders), JMD (Maqiupai), Mad Peet (Irides) and lastly ChaosReins (???) this developer hasnâ€™t released a game yet. The press release also discusses other expansions in the Goat Store Network to read the entire press release.If anyone has any further questions hit the comments as GSP will be watching them.

Do someone know how to contact them . I used contact form on main site but got no answer .I wanted to make an order but they do not have possibility to add my counrty in order form , they have even Rwanda but no my country .

Btw, I took the freedom to remove all personal opinion from your newspost. A dedicated post in our forums expressing your personal opinion and theories is the much better option then to [mis]use your privileges as a newsposter for personal opinion.

Well they definetly are similar but one's perception and image generalization abilities have to be abysmal to confuse them.

RSG took a Dreamcast template and replaced the logo with their own.All the GOAT games have done the exact same thing.

You could argue that the RSG logo looks amazingly similar to the Dreamcast logo I suppose.Still, when you publish a bunch of games with a black arc down the side then bash another company for dressing their games up like legit games it does come off kinda desperate. Neither company was intending to decieve customers - people just want their games to look the same.

I also find it rather amusing that if Solar Struggle was coming to Dreamcast - this 100% wouldn't be an issue, and if anybody had dared suggest it Bilal would be arguing on the complete opposite side.

RSG took a Dreamcast template and replaced the logo with their own.All the GOAT games have done the exact same thing.

The difference is significant in GSP's case, they haven't slapped their logo/name (surprisingly it isn't even on the cover), further more there is more to the casing then to the front cover, you also have to look at the back cover and the spine. They do look similar to Ntsc/U releases but noticeably different, even at first glance, the fact that the developers name/logo goes in the cover, make all games look different.

RSG on the other hand have an insignificant substitution (and removal of DC logo on the top right side). They replicate the Jap style as much as legally possible, given that they are German's you see the extra effort as you have Pal games in Germany with the blue swiril and those

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Neither company was intending to decieve customers - people just want their games to look the same.

I wouldn't use the word decieve, RSG try's harded to assimilate, Max told me that one of the problems they had with publishing Dux was because Rene wanted to employ DVD cases, RSG was convinced the more it looks like a Japanese release the more it will sell. HUcast in the end choose to publish the game independently, although they mailed the classic Japanese style front and Back covers to anyone who was uncomfortable with the DVD cases.

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I also find it rather amusing that if Solar Struggle was coming to Dreamcast - this 100% wouldn't be an issue, and if anybody had dared suggest it Bilal would be arguing on the complete opposite side.

He had a similar reply for me then, in my personal opinion I like what RSG did, we presently have Black label DC games, White Label DC games, Blue Pal Games, Red Japan games. You don't want to add another category into the mix. I forgot about the All Star releases, they go on a seperate rack as well.

While some may find it to be a deception, I find it healthy assimilation and I have to say Goat Games don't assimilate well with any of the mentioned DC styles, Dan himself posted in the linked thread that I should keep my inde games seperate from the commercially released one.

The big question for Bilal, or any others, is why do they care about commercial releases? Especially when the scene has always been about homebrew...

Now when that's gone, it's time to pack everything up, and move on.

Because while everybody likes to support the scene and everything that is done to help it, the end result is most important. Without meaning any disrespect to those still working in the homebrew scene, RSG/GOAT have been the only sources of what I would consider full proper games for the Dreamcast in many years.

If we were to list the best Dreamcast homebrew games of the past couple of years and exclude all commercial releases and ports...what are we left with? Unfortunately, not a lot. RSG published stuff that DC fans got excited about, and it's a shame that they've gone. It's not a surprise though.

As some people know, I try to drop in from time to time to read the latest goings-on with the Dreamcast community and was curious to see how this announcement was received. Interesting points all.

I'm going to be a little more honest with some counterpoints to everyone here than I have been in the past because we're at that point where I feel I can be. So who knows, this may be interesting. Some counterpoints, and just some other stuff that is worth saying.

1) Why is it important that our releases our listed as commercial instead of homebrew? I've said this a billion times before -- I can't make these games in my basement, which is the definition of homebrew. They are all professionally pressed and distributed. Most of the development teams have used the games they have published to move on to other industry jobs because they can point to them as commercial projects that were released. Many of our developers have.

2) It has been really disappointing to us the amount of mis-information that Red Spot Games has decided to spread with their promotion of Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles and Rush Rush Rally Racing lately. Things such as claiming that the titles were the best selling games ever and they knew our numbers does hurt our developers who have completed projects. We've never come out and made outlandish claims against them, but here's a true one...

The only reason that Red Spot Games felt comfortable publishing titles is because after we had TONS of problems pressing and publishing Maqiupai and Inhabitants, and we spent thousands on reprinting those titles, hiring lawyers to figure out if we could press those titles, getting in contact with people to ensure it was done right, and so on, Max contacted us because he was putting together a demo disc that he wanted to release, and was worried about all the stuff we had gone through. So, I both offered to press and send him the disk at cost, and I explained how to press games so he could do it himself.

I'll be the first to tell you that as a businessman, it was completely naive to do. You don't give up the 'secret' if you will to something you spent thousands of dollars to figure out how to do. But I did because ultimately, I'm a fan of the community and wanted to help move things forward. So, a 'snivel snivel' fact is that without us telling them about the method we spent thousands upon thousands working out the legalities for, I can't imagine they would have risked publishing a game.

And truthfully, I understand why he did it -- he saw a community he could take advantage of by publishing games with basically a zero based cost of entry. It makes it pretty lucrative to publish if you don't have to worry about anything other than production, so we did the groundwork for that.

3) If you take what we spent on production, legal stuff and so on, I think we would need to release about 15 more games to even get close to breaking even. And, that has all been made harder.

4) The difference in the art that we mentioned was because Red Spot Game's decision to wholesale ape the look of Japanese releases has actually hurt us. Say what you want, but if you put a Red Spot Games release side by side with a Japanese release, the difference is not much. If you put ours side by side with any countries release, you can see that it is different. Yes, we have a black curve because we wanted something to remind people it was a Dreamcast game, but it has the developer name instead of the Dreamcast logo, and the spine is completely different. You can't confuse them.

I have seen print publications call certain Red Spot Games titles official Japanese releases.

So, why does this hurt us? Because I have talked with retailers who gave a title that Red Spot Games did a chance, and even they weren't sure if it was legit or not until it showed up, when they had to change their pages to better reflect the independent nature of it. I have talked with multiple retailers that have had issues being supported by them both before and after a release, and it makes those same retailers turn us down because of it.

The fact is that after Cool Herders, we had a long break between projects. Before Cool Herders, our retail network was pretty set. After Cool Herders, our largest retail partner (Lik-Sang) which literally sold thousands of our games for us had closed, and the majority of Dreamcast retailers online are smaller independent shops who were stuck with a bunch of copies of Wind and Water that they paid a bunch of money for, and had no interest in carrying our products too because of that, or because they had to put up new information about the releases before that to clarify for customers what they were.

5) At no time ever have we been about making money with this. And again, maybe that is why we were stupid enough to invest thousands in an enterprise that we knew probably wouldn't make much money if any, but we did it because we're fans. Both Gary and I first got together and became friends in 5th and 6th grade to program, and it was always one of our goals to actually publish titles.

In fact, the GOAT Store exists because we, as developers, got screwed with a publisher when we were working on a project about 10 years ago, and the GOAT Store rose from the ashes of that experiment. Our goal was to do right by the developers, and I think we have. I got cards from some of the developers after the birth of my son. Irides: Master of Blocks had contributions from darn near everyone that ever worked on a project with us. And, we have a project in the works that we are hoping to announce on 9/9/10 that involves a publisher we've worked with before -- although it *isn't* a Dreamcast project. Although also don't read that as there isn't a chance that we could announce a Dreamcast project in the future... but there isn't currently plans to.

Perhaps because we were so willing to put our own money on the line, it frustrates me to no end when the day before Red Spot Games announces Rush Rush Rally Racing, Max is quoted as saying that if the Dreamcast community doesn't support the next project, they won't do any more. With GOAT Store Publishing, it has *always* been about if Gary and I believe in the project, and if we do we will produce it. If the game doesn't sell fifteen thousand copies (or whatever the next claim will be), and it only sells fifteen copies, while that sucks we still ultimately believe in the project.

If Wind and Water isn't selling, or Irides: Master of Blocks isn't selling, I don't blame that on the community not supporting it or me or whatever, I blame that on us not promoting it good enough and that pushes me to come up with new promotions that can work for that. We featured Irides: Master of Blocks for instance at the Midwest Gaming Classic. I would be sold bold right now as to say that it has sold amazingly, but I also would NEVER say that if you don't go buy it, we won't consider any more projects. That's unprofessional.

6) One thing that we have definitely always tried to do is keep everything as professional as possible. I don't want to get into a "pissing match" with Red Spot Games, as it only hurts the entire community. It's why I've never publicly noted things like this before, because if the community divides, then everyone loses -- and the people affected the most are the developers, who can no longer get their work seen by people because it isn't getting published any more.

And, to be fair, although I disliked us spending all the money on the legal stuff and then giving it away, and I greatly disliked the purposely confusing (as was even noted by someone else in this thread) Japanese-but-not Red Spot Games appearance, but I felt that they had been pretty professional until just recently where Red Spot Games decided to start making statements about how games were the best selling of all time, and then when we questioned it, he made up responses about how he knew things that he simply couldn't have.

And, ultimately, his announcements were made in such a way that I felt and do feel that they could hurt the developers of the games that we have published by making them seem less noteworthy. It's unprofessional to do this.

At no point did we ever resort to publicly attacking or questioning them, even when their decisions made it tougher for us to do business. The biggest reason for my decision to word this announcement like it is and ultimately for us prioritizing the re-launch of the GOAT Store Publishing Web site is because we felt that we needed to get the information back up about the developers and projects that we completely believe in so it was there for everyone to see, and so that if the tact of Red Spot Games is to now promote their games by trying to say that they have sold so much better than anything else, then at least we can have up some good, honest information about our projects that have been developed.

We've never at any point tried to represent ourselves as something we aren't, but we also don't feel the need to compare our products against anyone elses. Our goal when we release a game isn't for someone to look at it and buy it because it is a Dreamcast game, but to look at it and buy it because it is a great game, competitively priced.

I definitely feel that we have achieved that, and I also definitely feel that we have gained a lot of respect from the industry because of that.

7) Finally, I do find it interesting to note (although this wasn't brought up here but elsewhere) that people have continually said that our sales must be bad on our games because we didn't have them in Play-Asia like Red Spot Games did. Disregarding Lik-Sang entirely just to make the point, the GOAT Store isn't just a publishing company but one of the largest US based classic gaming retailers. We have never even been asked to carry a Red Spot Games title.

If we had been, we would have considered it as we have done with every independent project that we have carried in our store in the past, and if you go through the entire site there are probably at least 100 independent things we have carried.

Having said that, I was actually contacted by one of my friends in the industry who actually specifically asked us not to carry them when he saw how it looked because they felt that it was uncomfortably close to the look of a Japanese game (so, if that was Max's goal again as someone pointed out, mission accomplished). Because the GOAT Store also happens to run the largest all-encompassing electronic gaming events in the United States, and because I maintain relationships with tons of different people in the industry who are extremely concerned about intellectual property rights, I can honestly say that we would have turned it down just to be safe and explained exactly why we felt uncomfortable about it. But, I've always found it interesting we weren't even asked.

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So there you have it, maybe longer than anyone cared to hear, but hopefully interesting enough. Again, I really harbor no ill will toward Red Spot Games as Max did what any sane person running a business would do to try to maximize profit and minimize risk. Gary and I have always treated GOAT Store Publishing as a hobby and a vehicle to do things that would accomplish things we dreamed about as little kids, and how many people can say they actually accomplished a dream they set out with as a little kid?

We wanted to and still want to help developers who might otherwise get screwed like we did when they are trying to develop their first title, and because of our unique position as an extremely large classic gaming retailer and from running the Midwest Gaming Classic (and therefore being able to promote things in a unique fashion), we have what I really feel is one of the best pipelines to take a small project for whatever console you might have and bring it to market with extremely minimal risk.

With hindsight being 20/20, I don't think that I would have changed a thing. Even though the process to begin publishing Dreamcast titles has cost us thousands of dollars that we don't expect to recoup, I feel that publishing Dreamcast games has opened more doors for us that create "synergy" (to use a corporate word) for us to cross promote with everything else we do. And we've learned a lot that we use both with other aspects of the GOAT Store and in life.

I also know that I've met a lot of friends by doing this, both in the development world and beyond it. In fact, my greatest memory about this whole thing is something that was said to me by someone that was both completely removed from our projects, but also perhaps the most important cog to getting it all done. Although it has been years and unfortunately, circumstances well beyond our control led us to no longer being in touch, what he both said to me and did for us is a single point that I look back upon with my life and still cannot believe it happened. Truly, Dreamcast publishing changed my life for the better, and I can't put a price tag on that.

A huge thanks to everyone involved with everything. To Red Spot Games if you're reading this, thanks for keeping us on our toes and making us better businessmen because of it. Just stop involving us in your comments about your great Dreamcast successes and we'll keep any mention of your box design out of our future ones

To anyone that has ever bought something from us, even if it wasn't an indie Dreamcast release, thanks for enjoying classic gaming and helping us to continue to do something that we still find fun over 10 years after we started it.

To anyone that did buy a Dreamast independent release from us, thanks for believing in our dream and supporting our projects.

To the developers that we've worked with, regardless of if the project got finished or not, you are all truly the big stars here, and we hope to really showcase the amazing talents that you shared with us on the new web site. None of this would be possible without the amazing skills that you all have.

We're going to keep working to keep the dream alive, and we can't wait to continue to share that dream with lots and lots of people. We've got a TON of stuff upcoming across all the different aspects of the GOAT Store that we're really excited about, and we hope that we continue to help to entertain people through one of the most unique experiences out there -- gaming.

Thanks! And, if you read this whole thing, kudos to you. Finally, if anyone has any questions, I will try to drop by every once in a while to answer them, although I still do have many things that for one reason or another, I cannot directly answer. But, I'll be happy to share as much as I can

There is a lot of text to use entire quotes with responses so my replies are with abbreviated quotes, I hope you can follow what I am trying to say while referencing back to the paragraphs of your original post Dan.

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1) Why is it important that our releases our listed as commercial instead of homebrew?...

I can completely understand the principle behind this but there is always the danger of being classed as some sort of 'elitist' with that approach, I still consider 'Independent Commercial' to be more accurate. The problem nowadays is that 'homebrew' has adopted 'indie' into its category, the term 'homebrew' many years ago did mean exactly as you posted, but with the Wii homebrew channel and the Xbox Live indie games becoming mainstream, there really should be no shame in acknowledging the roots of the final commercial product.

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2) It has been really disappointing to us the amount of mis-information that Red Spot Games has decided to spread...

All that was really straight-up marketing hype, let's remember here that GOAT has been quiet for a long time, and ANY hype from anyone that counteracts a silent contender is going to get noticed.

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The only reason that Red Spot Games felt comfortable publishing titles is because......I'll be the first to tell you that as a businessman,......And truthfully, I understand why he did it...

This seems to be where the real disappointment is, and I sympathize with you about the situation.

That is life buddy, you will get screwed by associates (and so-called friends alike) if you take the naive approach.

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3) If you take what we spent on production, legal stuff and so on...

That just says it all in my book.

Even though I really would be dreaming to believe in GOAT releasing another 15 Dreamcast games, it shows the dedication towards the real community that you guys had from the beginning. Just remind yourselves that the pioneers of anything are fondly remembered in certain circles but hardly ever credited outside of those circles.

What you must also think of is the time (time = money) that genuine members of the community put into projects that did not make their way to a GOAT release. This of course refers back to my reply above to the first quote: the projects that did not make it on a GOAT release are just 'homebrew' in your eyes, that commercial/homebrew divide without communication can also damage the remaining community in the long run.

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4) The difference in the art that we mentioned...

It is clear that GOAT used 'indie' artwork for spines and rear covers for their releases, in fact they are very reminiscent of the homebrew covers that appeared in 2002/2003. It is ONLY the black curve on the front cover that everyone refers to when comparing GOAT released artwork with officially licensed SEGA Dreamcast NTSC US released artwork. That black curve does not violate any known copyright, and its inclusion within the artwork was nothing more than a 'nudge' towards an official Dreamcast release (which can be deemed as either a clever move or a narrow mindset by GOAT). Even if strict copyright on Dreamcast cover sleeve design did exist (beyond the SEGA, Dreamcast, and swirl logo), 'Fair Use' would be brought into the equation here. With the RedSpotGames spine and rear artwork releases there is more than an argument towards plagiarism, thankfully SEGA is not producing Dreamcast games any more, if they were, it could be a different story.

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5) At no time ever have we been about making money with this...

Money is expendable, life is limited, experience is priceless.

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In fact, the GOAT Store exists because we, as developers, got screwed...

"Welcome to the machine".

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...Max is quoted as saying that if the Dreamcast community doesn't support the next project, they won't do any more...

It's all corporate claptrap, get stressed by it or let it blow over you, it's YOUR choice.

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...I blame that on us not promoting it good enough...

A truer statement never typed.

GOAT was the basis of something unique, that does not mean it still can not fulfill the dream, but you guys really need to get to grips with the current retro climate.

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...but I also would NEVER say that if you don't go buy it, we won't consider any more projects. That's unprofessional...

About as unprofessional as 'vanishing' from the community for years after so many promises to coders and supporters with little delivery?, then expecting rapturous applause after a new release?

Lessons to be learnt all around here.

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6) One thing that we have definitely always tried to do is keep everything as professional as possible. I don't want to get into a "pissing match" with Red Spot Games, as it only hurts the entire community...

The community has been divided from day one (literally), just look how many Dreamcast sites have come and gone, look at how they exist today, it is still the same, and the GOAT/RedSpotGames status is an accurate reflection of the community as a whole - IT IS A MESS!.

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...his announcements were made in such a way that I felt and do feel that they could hurt the developers of the games that we have published by making them seem less noteworthy...

Really?, take a look at a portion of your own post again:

"Most of the development teams have used the games they have published to move on to other industry jobs because they can point to them as commercial projects that were released"

If someone representing another company really needs to lower the standard of a 'previous release by another company' to showcase their new release, that in itself is a desperate attempt at attention (especially if it's an independent release), I think you are looking into this far too deeply, you are confusing personal attachments to facts, and those facts are blurring the reality.

Let me throw in a neutral example here: Google for Olivier Chatry (you may remember his name from 'Epitech' and the creation of 'Iris3D'). Take a look at the credits and current status Olivier has since his humble beginnings within the Dreamcast community, and ALL THAT from someone who DID NOT get a GOAT release (even though he was a major player for the roots of - with regards to an announced GOAT game: DCASTLE). I need go no further with name-dropping for anyone actually involved with a GOAT release.

I will say this again: Just remind yourselves that the pioneers of anything are fondly remembered in certain circles but hardly ever credited outside of those circles.

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...The biggest reason for my decision to word this announcement like it is and ultimately for us prioritizing the re-launch of the GOAT Store Publishing Web site...

In my opinion: IT'S ABOUT TIME!

You guys should have done this a LONG time ago, but I guess it's better late than never. The real genius behind the Dreamcast community has always been the developers, the ones who created the development tools, the ones who ported the games, the ones who created the genuine games, and the ones who created or ported the emulators and applications, etc..

A little note to the warez users out there: Let's not forget the ones who added the cracktros to the original warez releases (even those had a touch of ingenuity about them), it is SO FUCKING EASY to rip and release a commercial game with a 90's era NFO, but it takes a little more effort to include a coded cracktro. There really is no creativity at all in ripping and re-compiling, but I guess it makes the lesser feel like contributors (and it keeps the ones who 'CAN NOT' happy).

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We've never at any point tried to represent ourselves as something we aren't...

You have however, represented yourselves as something you are, negligent of the 'homebrew' developers themselves.

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7) Finally, I do find it interesting to note... that people have continually said that our sales must be bad on our games because we didn't have them in Play-Asia like Red Spot Games did...

Do you or anyone else really believe that Play-Asia is the be-all and end-all retailer?, that is just the fickle mind of the fickle person, there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about there.

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...I was actually contacted by one of my friends in the industry...

A picture paints a thousand words, the Mona Lisa with a grin painted onto the mouth is still just a moniker of the original.

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...I really harbor no ill will toward Red Spot Games...

That is plainly obvious, but the disappointment speaks volumes. You have learned a valuable lesson in business Dan, DO NOT get fooled again!.

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...how many people can say they actually accomplished a dream they set out with as a little kid?...

With a dream fulfilled there really is no need for disappointment.

So you guys made mistakes, so what?. Who hasn't?.

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We wanted to and still want to help developers who might otherwise get screwed like we did when they are trying to develop their first title...

So go ahead and do it, DO NOT let a MINOR setback drag you guys down.

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...we've learned a lot that we use both with other aspects of the GOAT Store and in life

Isn't that the whole point?.

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I also know that I've met a lot of friends by doing this......I can't put a price tag on that

Friends you can always count on, associates you can not.

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A huge thanks to everyone involved with everything.

Ditto.

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To the developers that we've worked with, regardless of if the project got finished or not, you are all truly the big stars here, and we hope to really showcase the amazing talents that you shared with us on the new web site. None of this would be possible without the amazing skills that you all have.

Ditto.

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We're going to keep working to keep the dream alive...

I certainly hope so.

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Thanks! And, if you read this whole thing, kudos to you.

Kudos to you for writing the whole thing to begin with.

_________________The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

There is a lot of text to use entire quotes with responses so my replies are with abbreviated quotes, I hope you can follow what I am trying to say while referencing back to the paragraphs of your original post Dan.

Oh geez, this will be interesting to reply to then...

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I can completely understand the principle behind this but there is always the danger of being classed as some sort of 'elitist' with that approach, I still consider 'Independent Commercial' to be more accurate. The problem nowadays is that 'homebrew' has adopted 'indie' into its category, the term 'homebrew' many years ago did mean exactly as you posted, but with the Wii homebrew channel and the Xbox Live indie games becoming mainstream, there really should be no shame in acknowledging the roots of the final commercial product.

No, and that is very true about the terms more or less blending together now, and it isn't that we aren't "acknowledging the roots" of the projects, but within the industry things are looked at differently...

A "homebrew" game is (to me at least, or it was before the Wii Homebrew channel and such) a game that is created by someone with the intent of learning how to create a game, proving a theory, or whatever. Because these games are (were) often released online so you could download them and burn them yourself to check out and they were free, the games may not have a final level of "polish" put on them that a commercial release would have.

As someone who programmed a lot myself, the concept and creating the initial start to make something work is the fun part. The part where you have to do bug searches, tweak gameplay elements and balance the game often takes a lot longer than the initial fun part, and is considerably less fun than the first part of the game.

But, it is perhaps the thing that big name developers look for the most out of smaller releases.

There is *absolutely nothing* wrong with doing a homebrew title. In fact, I think it is really something that someone should be proud of. But, to be able to take homebrew release to the 'next level' definitely takes some hard work, and I think that it is unfair to class them both together.

Also, compared to Red Spot Games which apparently purposely tried to make confusion over it's games looking just like Japanese releases, I think that our games MUCH more acknowledge their heritage. I don't exactly know what more you would want from us -- putting downloadable titles on our site? Referring to everyone as "not professional" developers instead of "independent"? I don't know what, exactly, you're after here. Could you clarify for me?

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All that was really straight-up marketing hype, let's remember here that GOAT has been quiet for a long time, and ANY hype from anyone that counteracts a silent contender is going to get noticed.

Yes, which is why we're not being silent. But, I'll also point out that in all of our marketing hype that we've done for lots and lots of stuff, I've never made bold claims without backing up my facts. Hell, we're overly cautious the other way because I'd rather not get called out as a liar or someone that makes up facts. To use the MGC as an example...

1) We have constantly referred to the show as the Midwest's Largest All-Encompassing Electronic Gaming event even though we were the *only* event to combine all the elements like we did because we didn't want anyone to be disappointed by it.2) We have claimed our attendance for the show each year by only counting tickets that are sold, and not any of the 12 and under who get in free. When we have an approximately 25% rate of kids entering the show, it has made vendors question us for claiming so low.

To me, it's better to have someone questioning why we are claiming so low than to tell others that we're lying and our attendance wasn't half of what it is.

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This seems to be where the real disappointment is, and I sympathize with you about the situation.

That is life buddy, you will get screwed by associates (and so-called friends alike) if you take the naive approach.

Oh, trust me -- I totally know and understand this. But for me, when I'm a fan of things, I find that being passionate about it often ingrains you more with people than by being cold and calculating about things, and when you find passionate people who don't screw you, magical things can happen.

Not to keep pointing back to it, but the MGC is an event where we have overall lost money so far. I'm expecting that next year, we'll finally have that change, but it has grown to the point that it entertains thousands of people every year and gets some of the largest industry luminaries to come and speak at it because the people that help us run it are all passionate fans who work with us to put on an amazing show.

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Even though I really would be dreaming to believe in GOAT releasing another 15 Dreamcast games, it shows the dedication towards the real community that you guys had from the beginning. Just remind yourselves that the pioneers of anything are fondly remembered in certain circles but hardly ever credited outside of those circles.

No, and it is interesting to me for instance that our entries for games like Feet of Fury and the others got taken down from Wikipedia at the same time the Red Spot Games ones went up, with the notation that our games were not notable for anything. Not to toot our own horn here, but ours were the first commercially published titles for a console that were done by an independent publisher through a 'backdoor' since Accolade made games for the Genesis. Ours were also the first games that went through after the DMCA was put into place, and could technically be pointed at if any future games are done in a similar fashion as a project that was done after the DMCA made *everything* murky to prove that you can do such a thing.

I said long ago that with the advent of things like Xbox Live Arcade, I expect there to be no future market for commercially released indie games in this fashion, as the entry cost to more or less "officially" develop a title for Xbox Live Arcade is not that different than the startup costs to prove that it is legal to make a commercial independent title. Besides that, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft I'm certain would be VERY quick to shut down a development like this to ensure that other companies don't jump on board.

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What you must also think of is the time (time = money) that genuine members of the community put into projects that did not make their way to a GOAT release. This of course refers back to my reply above to the first quote: the projects that did not make it on a GOAT release are just 'homebrew' in your eyes, that commercial/homebrew divide without communication can also damage the remaining community in the long run.

I don't know where this whole belief comes again, and I do take offense to it. We worked with many, many developers on many, many things, and as I have stated in the past -- Yes, not everything was good enough or complete enough for an official release. When a developer comes to me with a game that, let's say for instance, is a Galaga clone and says, "We want to publish this!" I think that we have every right to say that it needs to be something more before we do. That doesn't make it any less noteworthy that it was programmed, but there is a difference between what we felt like would earn money and what wouldn't.

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In fact, the GOAT Store exists because we, as developers, got screwed...

"Welcome to the machine".

No, I know -- BUT (and maybe this was naive too) our goal was to create a place that developers could feel confident going and not getting screwed doing their stuff. Just because the world works that way doesn't mean that *I* have to.

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...I blame that on us not promoting it good enough...

A truer statement never typed.

GOAT was the basis of something unique, that does not mean it still can not fulfill the dream, but you guys really need to get to grips with the current retro climate.

I don't exactly know again what you mean by this, but I'll just say that as one of the largest online classic gaming retailers, someone who has networked with tons of different stores because we also happen to run what I think based on attendance is the largest show period for retro gaming in the world, I don't exactly think that we're misfiring with stuff.

I'm guessing you're one of the people that are still angry over the announcement we made at MGC06 about the games that were coming, which I'll next...

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About as unprofessional as 'vanishing' from the community for years after so many promises to coders and supporters with little delivery?, then expecting rapturous applause after a new release?

Lessons to be learnt all around here.

Sure -- and as I pointed out two years ago when we had basically completed a year without hearing much of anything after the announcement the year before:

1) Unless you know something that I don't, we didn't make any promises to any coders that were not fulfilled.2) We learned from making the announcement when we did that it is stupid to really start to promote something until it is ready to come to market.

Did I expect "rapturous applause" for releasing Irides: Master of Blocks? No. I don't think we got rapturous applause from the Dreamcast community for any of our projects and if we did, they missed the point -- the developers should be the ones being applauded for finishing the project, not us.

As for the games that were announced and did not happen, after we made that announcement where we pressured people that were working on stuff to announce them early so we could start tracking them and hyping them, the problem simply became that independent development is a s-l-o-w process, and once you get the first bit of it down and get everyone hyped up, it can take MONTHS to tweak things to get it right for the release. And this is no fault of anyone, it's just the nature of the beast and working on stuff that doesn't pay until it is complete -- a lot of people, as you noted elsewhere, moved on in that time to better jobs or lost interest, or whatever.

There are two projects in particular that we had other issues with, and I'll highlight those right here -- GOAT Games we had the major issue of not having the menu system written first, and then trying to reverse squeeze people into something that was always a little ways away from being coded. Although I don't devote tons of time to it, I *still* want GOAT Games to come out, and I am *still* working on a way for that to happen. But coding a menu isn't exactly sexy or fun, and we ended up after the contest for GOAT Games with less titles than we thought we would get for it. I believe there were around six or seven completed titles ready to go, which while they are all awesome, great titles, makes the full disc a hard sell. But, as I've said, I'm *still* working on that. But for updates, I can't imagine every couple months going, "I GOT SOMEONE TO DRAW THE GOAT ASSET WE NEEDED! CHECK IT OUT!" and that exciting anyone.

Radium a lot of people pointed to and wondered what happened, as it was announced to be coming very soon. Well, long story short, the developer (a professional development house actually) came to us with Radium and a bunch of other titles, and sent us a version that could be played on the Dreamcast so we could see what it looked like. They said they would then improve the graphics for the games. After we got the disc and we started going through it, Gary and I came up with a HUGE list of issues that the game said, not just to note that it was literally the Game Boy game running emulated. We wrote back to them and said that we were excited with the potential, but it definitely needed some tweaks. They agreed, and the next thing I know there is a press release on their site about how the game is going to come out in a few months from the GOAT Store. Which made Gary and I scramble to put something together and put it up so it didn't look really fishy, which we did.

After that, we were told that they did not intend to make any changes to the game, and that we had to choose between publishing it as is or not publishing it at all. The game was not fun at all in it's current state, so Gary and I talked with them and said we could delay it and fix the problems, and they decided not to release it because of that.

So, those are the two stories behind the two games that we're probably asked the most about, and I've always put the blame for both of those on us. As for the other 12, it would have been better for all concerned if those weren't mentioned.

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The community has been divided from day one (literally), just look how many Dreamcast sites have come and gone, look at how they exist today, it is still the same, and the GOAT/RedSpotGames status is an accurate reflection of the community as a whole - IT IS A MESS!.

Yes, but what good does it do to divide it further? What do I have to gain (other than pissing off potential customers if the community is divided) by going out and pissing on someone else's parade? What Red Spot Games did was nothing short of miraculous -- I don't deny that. I just don't want them to make statements about us that knock us down for no reason, as I think that what we did and what we went through that Red Spot Games didn't have to go through because of us is even more amazing.

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...his announcements were made in such a way that I felt and do feel that they could hurt the developers of the games that we have published by making them seem less noteworthy...

Really?, take a look at a portion of your own post again:

"Most of the development teams have used the games they have published to move on to other industry jobs because they can point to them as commercial projects that were released"

If someone representing another company really needs to lower the standard of a 'previous release by another company' to showcase their new release, that in itself is a desperate attempt at attention (especially if it's an independent release), I think you are looking into this far too deeply, you are confusing personal attachments to facts, and those facts are blurring the reality.

Let me throw in a neutral example here: Google for Olivier Chatry (you may remember his name from 'Epitech' and the creation of 'Iris3D'). Take a look at the credits and current status Olivier has since his humble beginnings within the Dreamcast community, and ALL THAT from someone who DID NOT get a GOAT release (even though he was a major player for the roots of - with regards to an announced GOAT game: DCASTLE). I need go no further with name-dropping for anyone actually involved with a GOAT release.

I will say this again: Just remind yourselves that the pioneers of anything are fondly remembered in certain circles but hardly ever credited outside of those circles.

Oh no, and I do know that, but here's the thing -- we're still working with a number of people.

It's just that if you keep repeating something over and over and over again, people (especially people that don't know the full details) begin to believe it. I do feel the need to combat the negative publicity publicly so if someone looks at it, they can see the difference.

And, while some may look at parts of what we posted as bitching, the truth is that how we differentiate our product from the actual releases is, to me, a big selling point of why you would want to work with us.

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In my opinion: IT'S ABOUT TIME!

You guys should have done this a LONG time ago, but I guess it's better late than never. The real genius behind the Dreamcast community has always been the developers, the ones who created the development tools, the ones who ported the games, the ones who created the genuine games, and the ones who created or ported the emulators and applications, etc..

The truth is GOAT Store Publishing only 'disappeared' off the web almost exactly a year ago when we were undergoing the huge rewrite of the entire site. It went down because it was simply a site that did not get a ton of traffic, and because we needed to recode it for the new core of our site now. But, when you're releasing a game and running a huge gaming convention, stuff gets put off.

Besides that, I had a horrible personal accident happen to me last year. As a matter of fact, it actually really hurt the promotion of Irides: Master of Blocks. On the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend last year, I basically took a spike to my left eye in a bad accident. Since that point, my vision in my left eye is permanently badly damaged (it went from 20/15 without glasses to 20/60 WITH glasses). At the time of the promotions for Irides: Master of Blocks starting, I was literally told that I should not be reading anything and should not have my eyes open for more than five minutes at a time. It was two weeks before I could be back on my feet to go to work or do much of anything.

On top of that, I became a father for the first time in January, which for as horrible as the eye thing is, way makes up for it. It's been a blast.

But, between that all, running the Midwest Gaming Classic, reopening the site, doing TONS of work overhauling the site to improve it, and so on, it just took the backseat for a bit.

I will point out however that our plan is to showcase the developers that we have worked with. I want to ask them questions and post interviews with them, give them a way to keep people up to date with what they are up to, and so on. At this point, I'm not planning on making the GOAT Store Publishing a sort of historical site about every Dreamcast developer ever, as I think there are already sites like the Wiki that do a great job keeping up with that info.

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You have however, represented yourselves as something you are, negligent of the 'homebrew' developers themselves.

Again, I don't know what you want from us here. Do you want me to celebrate every release that isn't a commercial game through the GOAT Store? That makes little sense. Do you want me to send Christmas cards to all of the developers?

All of our developers started out creating something that was a homebrew title, and they took it to the next step to publish it independently. We found them all because their projects were awesome *before* we talked with them about publishing them. I'm pretty certain that for all of the games were published, we asked the developers about publishing them -- it wasn't a case where the developers were begging us.

I'll say it again, if you read the comments that developers have made that have worked with us, I don't know of any developer who felt slighted by us. We didn't constantly bug them about the projects because we never felt that was our place, but I did check in with them every so often, and was always happy to look at anything they wanted me to. I think that I have playtested each of our games on average 40+ hours personally. I know Irides: MoB was over 100 hours by me. I'm not doing that because I have no idea how tough it is to develop a game, but to try to help the developer really hone their craft.

It was interesting to me to see that in the Red Spot Games note, they stated one thing they liked about the new game is that, "We also have been involved to the development process (e.g. voice recordings) and really enjoyed the new experience of participating directly in the production of a new game." That's surprising to me, as every game that we did has a ton of fingerprints from ideas that we had all over it -- although the developer was always told that they had the final say, a lot of things were bounced back and forth and I think it is why the games turned out so well. Maybe the involvement with development is what other developers didn't want from us, but why not push a game to be the best it can be?

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...I really harbor no ill will toward Red Spot Games...

That is plainly obvious, but the disappointment speaks volumes. You have learned a valuable lesson in business Dan, DO NOT get fooled again!

Oh, I won't deny some disappointment there, and I also have fully come to grips with something that I thought would be the lasting legacy of the GOAT Store will be reduced to something that the developers and I remember, and maybe just a couple of other people, and because the final 'flash' was done by a different company, everything else will probably be forgotten by all but a handful of people.

I'd love for us to be remembered in a more positive light, but the error of the games announcement in 2006 is in many ways our legacy - we hyped up people for something that we had no control over delivery of unless we decided to just publish whatever we could find. And I do find that too bad.

And, even with me saying *ALL* of this, there is still tons more interesting stories out there, many of which may get lost to time, some of which already have.

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With a dream fulfilled there really is no need for disappointment.

So you guys made mistakes, so what?. Who hasn't?

No, and I totally know this at the end. At the end of the day, if I was *only* friends with one person because of it, it was worth it.

I cannot tell you how amazing it felt to get cards from developers when my son was born. *That* does not happen every day. There is NO disappointment that I have with any developer we've worked with, which is again why I find you claiming that they were deceived to be frustrating.

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So go ahead and do it, DO NOT let a MINOR setback drag you guys down.

We're not

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Kudos to you for writing the whole thing to begin with.

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No problem. More kudos for reading this one too, I guess.

I've never felt the need to hide from the Dreamcast community. I've always been happy to take part in it and read the new news when I can (harder with a baby!). The whole thing about how we disappeared was I think a great misunderstanding because we simply had nothing to show until something came along ready to be shown. And then Irides: Master of Blocks occurred, which in my opinion is an absolutely outstanding title, and we had a reason to talk again.

If anyone ever wants to get into touch with me, feel free to PM me or email me, which every developer had my address. I am glad to talk about stuff one on one if you like. I'm not making any promises right now that the Dreamcast community will suddenly be hearing tons from us, as while there are things in the pipeline still, as I've said before -- when the developers are very close to releasing them and we feel confident in them, we'll be MORE than happy to promote them. But before that point, we don't want to disappoint everyone by talking about something that isn't a guaranteed lock.

GOAT Store Publishing at a minimum is going to be there to show people that if they want to do something with us, we'll be happy to try our best to make it work if we believe in it too. And, I think and hope that we have some cool stuff up our sleeves

...it is interesting to me for instance that our entries for games like Feet of Fury and the others got taken down from Wikipedia at the same time the Red Spot Games ones went up...

I am not sure if that is relevant, but seeing as you brought up the subject it must have preyed on your mind a bit. There was a time a couple of years ago when there seemed to be a trend to remove any legitimate Wikipedia entries for Dreamcast Independent commercial releases (particularly every entry related to GOAT). The thing to remember here is: what was the state of GOAT (and every notable Independent Dreamcast site) back in the summer of 2008?.

Maqiupai (deleted 6 December 2008) - they must have missed this one the first time around.

Interestingly, the DC Tonic Wikipedia page was also deleted around the same time as the majority of GOAT related entries (deleted 02 Aug 2008).

To top it all off, the Dan Potter Wikipedia page was also deleted (29 Jul 2008).

So was it a conspiracy against GOAT?.

Wikipedia is maintained by anyone who can be bothered to make an entry and/or edit an entry, the Dreamcast community had enough members to make an entry viable (myself included), it just didn't happen back in 2008. Editors (administration) for Wikipedia are just like everyone else, if they do not know the particular relevance of something they are totally alien to (or if they have a chip on their shoulder), entries get deleted - simple as that!.

Out of interest, the Wind and Water Wikipedia entry was also proposed for deletion on 28 Jul 2008 (before the Dreamcast release).

_________________The beauty of Facebook, Twitter and all the other online media distractions is that those who have no place in real society are kept occupied. In the meantime we useful people will continue to experience real life without the unnecessary hindrance of imbecilic attention.

Publishing releases that look official is one thing, but there's another thing that might be of a similar if not even higher importance. Aesthetics. The Japanese Dreamcast template is extremely well designed. And if I could choose I would do the very same thing as Max did, so I can relate to the decision he made in regards to the redspotgames template.

On an interesting side note, here's an old post by Max where he expressed his thoughts on how he would design a template: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=64728&p=696596&hilit=goat#p696596The photos he provided showed his collection of Dreamcast games, almost all of which were Japanese games.

So I think it was a choice made because of aesthetic preference, not to try to fool customers or resellers. Of course, the side effect of that is that you can put the game onto your shelf right next to your Japanese games. That is an advantage, but like I wrote more or less a side effect of the choice you made due to your own personal preference.

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